When a legend in his sport speaks, he’s going to get attention. When it’s a quotable legend like former Florida coach Steve Spurrier, that’s only going to double. So it’s no surprise that having Spurrier call college football an unfair sport with the NIL rules attracted attention.
And before I get into his comments, I’ll concede that he has some reasonable points. College football does need to clean up NIL. The transfer portal has essentially created full free agency every year. That’s not fair to the coaches. West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez and his staff deserve to take a couple weeks off and have a life. So does every other college football coach in America. It’s not right that they should have to recruit their entire team, plus other college teams, plus high schools, every single year.
And if that was Spurrier’s main argument, I’d have no reason to write this piece. But that’s not where Spurrier went.
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Instead, the Ol’ Ball Coach focused on the fact that a school like Big 12 rival Central Florida doesn’t have the money to compete for national championships. And to that, I have to say: Really, Steve Spurrier? Unfair sport? Where have you been?
College Football Has Always Been An Unfair Sport
And Spurrier couldn’t have picked a worse example of how it’s always been unfair than UCF. The Knights, you might recall, won a national championship in 2017 and got mocked for saying so. This was despite UCF being the only undefeated team and owning a win over Auburn, which handed CFP champion Alabama its only loss.
That should have been the other way around. Alabama lost on the field, UCF never did. It should have been the Knights celebrated and the Tide mocked for crowning themselves champions. But UCF never had a fair shot to play for a title. There’s a reason that when Houston basketball coach Kelvin Sampson took that job with the school in the American Athletic Conference, he told booster and Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, “You can’t win the national championship in football. They won’t let you. But you can win it in basketball.”
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West Virginia fans know just how unfair college football can be. In 2007, a year where nobody could stay unbeaten (or even have one loss), the Mountaineers came a game short of playing for the title. All they needed to do was beat Pittsburgh and they’d get a chance at Missouri if the Tigers won the Big 12 or Ohio State if the Tigers lost to Oklahoma.
Of course, you probably remember this story. The Mountaineers lost, and they didn’t get the benefit of the doubt. They did go to the Fiesta Bowl and smashed the Oklahoma team that beat Missouri, but that was a consolation prize. A school like LSU or Ohio State had much more margin for error, simply off of name.
College Football Is a Less Unfair Sport Now
Is UCF at a disadvantage in the Big 12 because of money? Yes. Spurrier is right about that. But would the Knights want to go back to where they used to be?
Not a chance. UCF now has a guaranteed seat at the table. If the Knights can go 13-0, or even 12-1 or 11-1, there’s no way they get left out today. And that’s what access has changed. Even in the NIL era, there’s only so much that money can buy.
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SMU is a prime example. The Mustangs bought their way into the ACC and don’t care who knows it. But they couldn’t buy enough talent to beat Penn State. They got into the playoff, but they weren’t remotely competitive in University Park.
And honestly? They’re just fine with that. The Mustangs would much rather take a first-round loss in the CFP than go play in a random bowl game after an 11-1 year in the American.
For a school like West Virginia, this doesn’t mean as much. The Mountaineers have played power conference football since they gave up independent status. But even for West Virginia, the new era is better than the era Spurrier coached in. That 2007 West Virginia team would have played on the road, but it would have gotten into the field. And given what RichRod’s crew did to the Sooners, it’s easy to see that team making a run like Ryan Day got out of Ohio State this year.
The Steve Spurrier Unfair Sport Claim Has No Solution — And Might Not Need One
College football is always going to be an unfair sport. That’s just the nature of the beast. When you have schools of different sizes competing with each other, geography and money will always play a role.
However, money isn’t everything. In 2015, the New York Yankees had the American League’s highest payroll. The Kansas City Royals’ payroll was just barely half that, and they ended up winning the title. The Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers have baseball’s highest payrolls, yet it took until 2024 for them to break through (the abbreviated 60-game season in 2020 doesn’t count).
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A smart coach and an efficient staff can win despite financial disadvantages. It isn’t going to be easy, but it is possible. And it’s much more possible now than it was when Spurrier was winning national titles at Florida.
That said, the system can be made better. Multi-year contracts with restrictions would help. You can’t have full multi-year deals because a player could find that the school is a poor fit for his academic needs even if he’s succeeding on the field. But a hybrid system, where a player can’t leave in the middle of a deal without school approval, can work.
Colleges getting out of the NIL game entirely and returning it to its original purpose would be great. But that’s not going to happen. NIL was supposed to allow things like Nicco Marchiol getting paid to do a commercial for a Morgantown Toyota dealer, or for Tye Edwards to attach his name to a summer camp and make some money. Unfortunately, schools used it to straight up pay players. And that genie won’t go back in the bottle.
But even in this new reality, it’s still better than where we’ve been. There’s now no scenario where a zero or even one-loss team gets left out. And that’s a system where West Virginia can realistically dream of a title run.
